We all need food. Who is obligated to grow it?*

Societies come into existence, Socrates says in Book II of Plato’s Republic, because “none of us is individually self-sufficient.” We depend on each other to satisfy even our most basic subsistence needs – needs like food, shelter, and clothing – since no one person is able to produce her means of subsistence without the help of others. Social life, Plato argues, is necessarily interdependent.

Our collective interdependence determines the structure of Plato’s ideal society at its deepest levels, especially the structure of the economy. Each citizen must specialize in one socially-necessary job, through which he “contributes his own work for the common use of all.” Who occupies these jobs is determined by the natural capacities of each worker, which leads Plato to his famous argument that philosopher-kings are best-suited to the job of ruling.

Now, far be it from me to suggest that we might actually want to live in Plato’s kallipolis. But in these early sections of Republic, Plato reveals a deep and widely-accepted truth of our modern economic life, namely that economic life is a life of dependence. In large and interdependent market societies like ours, to satisfy even my most basic need for food, I depend on an expansive network of farmers, transportation and logistics services, distributors, merchants, and a job that pays me enough to buy enough food. Because so much of the production of my means of subsistence are out of my control, my dependence on others makes me vulnerable. This is because, at the most basic level, whether I have enough to meet my needs depends on someone else not only producing enough of that thing, but also being willing to sell it to me at a price that I can afford. Add to this potential failures in the logistics and transportation sector, fluctuations in demand which render socially-necessary goods scarce, and the risk of unemployment (“at any time, for any reason, for no reason at all”). My economic dependence is, therefore, a source of great precarity. Failures on any one of these dimensions is a threat to my basic subsistence.

Plato’s solution to the problem of economic dependence and the threat of precarity is a work requirement…

This essay forthcoming in Psyche. Stay tuned for a link.